


The Hollow Wall

by Nimori



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-04
Updated: 2010-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 17:08:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimori/pseuds/Nimori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry has a ghost to put away. It's a larger job than he once expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hollow Wall

Once, he inherited a house full of ghosts. When he is eighteen and respected and feared and heroic and heartsick, he returns.

The house is empty and has been for months, interloping Order members gone back to homes (this house could never be one), leaving it to the one person who has no home to return to. He could have one, if he would make the effort, but he wants the quiet and he wants to wallow in self-pity for a while before he pulls himself together and tries to build an ordinary life out of the wreckage of an extraordinary childhood.

Besides, he likes one of the ghosts in this house, and has vague ideas about putting it away before he moves on.

Moving on is healthy. Hermione would say so.

There is more of Sirius in the house than he expects. The little reminders needle him more, disturb him more, bring him more dreams and nightmares, and he thinks maybe moving on isn't so healthy after all, but he perseveres because it is what he has always done, and Dumbledore taught him people are creatures of habit.

Curiosity (meddling) is also habit.

He finds business correspondence behind the empty bottles in the drinks cabinet, and reads it. It's not personal, and the money is his now (he tells himself to quell the spark of conscience that never would have lived anyway). A goblin named Alpinhorn handled Sirius's finances while he was in Azkaban, and after. The letters are frightening in their formality, and not Sirius at all.

He finds photo albums in the attic (he has been up there snooping, no other word for it). Most of the ones of Sirius have been drawn on in a childish hand, moustaches and glasses and curling devil's horns. He quietly hates Regulus a little more (for stealing this look at Sirius, for wasting Dumbledore's death on a trinket, for not finishing the job he started).

He picks a room, that first night, and wakes up in Sirius's room, in Sirius's bed, where Sirius slept as a child and a prisoner. The second night he locks the door. The third night he charms his blanket not to let him up until dawn, and wakes in the midst of apparating straight into the bed a floor below.

The fourth night he sleeps in Sirius's bed. It feels like disrespect and desperation both and gives him headaches, but it must be healthy to hurt like this, it must be (Hermione would say so), and so he stays.

It will get better, he tells himself every day. Every day it doesn't.

When it's cold, he wears Sirius's jumpers, even after they stop smelling like him. When it rains, he goes through the drawers.

There are two books bound together with a bit of twine in the desk in Sirius's room (_his_ room). One is a Charms textbook, the other a history of Grim sightings, but when he touches them he feels a welcoming tingle of magic, and the covers ripple like the matches his class once transfigured to needles, until one is mulberry leather with 'Harry' written in gold leaf across the front and the other is smaller and black and well-thumbed with 'Sirius' in block letters on the spine.

The contents of each book, when he opens them and reads as he must, are identical. Entries in his own handwriting (he doesn't remember writing them) alternate with replies from Sirius (he put all of Sirius's letters in a box in his bank vault when Sirius was still a wanted man, but he knows them all letter-perfect and these are not them). These books could be in German for all their familiarity; he feels he should know these -- as he feels he should know German because it's all letters and he _knows_ how to read, he learned in school. But he doesn't (read German, remember this).

He turns to the first page of the mulberry copy. His heart tries to gain his attention, pass on some garbled message of panic, but he tells it a book is only paper.

Tom Riddle's diary was only paper.

_Dear Sirius,_ (he had written, apparently)

_How are you? I'm glad you got out of the house, even if it was only to the train station. Is Professor Lupin still there? School is not looking good this year. We have loads_ ('loads' is underlined) _of homework, and our new Defence professor is awful_ ('awful' is underlined twice). _Worse than Snape. You don't have to see him now that he's at Hogwarts, do you?_

_Thank you again for the birthday present. It's brilliant. You're brilliant, have I told you? I hate the idea of not being able to openly write to you, but this is much safer. Faster than owls, too, and it doesn't bite. Have you thought about Christmas? I hope you don't think badly of me for asking. We can do something else, if you want. Maybe more of the same? I want to see you, anyhow._

_Write back._

_Harry_

The handwriting changes then, and the ink, but he checks the black copy and both books stay identical, down to the smudged thumbprint in the corner.

_Dear Harry,_ (Sirius wrote back, apparently)

_Do I have to answer all that? I'm fine. Yes, I liked getting out. No, Remus is off doing something for Dumbledore. I can't tell you what Snape is doing, and if you spew any more trite letter-writing etiquette in this book I'll put you over my knee and spank you._ (The words 'spank you' have been traced over several times, and the other hand has written 'I'd like that!' in the margin, and he flushes as something hot and unpleasant settles in his stomach.)

_Tell me stories about your day. I'd tell you about my day, but it would bore you. I'll tell you about the dream I had last night instead. We were outside in the sunshine, I think it was a picnic, and you were scratching my ear even though I was human. Remus brought us a bottle of wine, but Moody said it was poisoned so we didn't drink it. Oh, and you were a metamorphmagus and kept turning your toes into snakes and talking to them. We had shoes at the beginning, I don't know what happened to them._

_I was hard when I woke up. Isn't that funny?_ (The chill in his stomach solidifies to a ball of ice. Or perhaps it's heat; he can't tell. His skin has gone numb.)

_I've thought of nothing but Christmas since you first told me what you wanted. I hope it's safe for you to come._ ('Come' is underlined, and there's a funny squiggle that might be a picture of someone laughing -- if Sirius could draw.) _I don't know that you'll get exactly what you want, but we'll make something up, yeah?_

_I'm thinking about the first time you kissed me, and wishing you were here to do it again._

_Sirius_

He doesn't remember ever reading this, doesn't remember replying, but there is a reply, and when he pages through there are a hundred or more entries, half in his own writing, and words leap out at him. Words like cock and love and miss you and fuck me. A scrap of paper falls from the black book, just where the entries trail off around January.

It's a photo of himself, naked. He's flirting with the camera (or the cameraman), all lowered lashes and soundless laughter, and he's ducking his head like he can't believe he's doing this (leaving evidence of his sexuality) but he's still touching himself and flattening his palms over his hipbones so his erection stands straight for the camera.

There's warmth in his shy smile, and it hurts.

_Dear Sirius,_ (goes the third entry, when he flips back to it)

_I want to suck your cock. How's that for letter-writing etiquette?_

_You can still read that, can't you? Bugger. Um. I would, but I didn't mean to say it. At least not like that._

_All right. School. School is okay, though I can see why some people leave after OWLs! The teachers are trying to kill us through sleep deprivation. Yesterday Neville blew up a cauldron -- in Transfiguration. We were turning them into parrots, extra marks if they could talk. Mine didn't._

_Oh, to hell with it. I don't want to talk about school. I'm glad I kissed you. I just wish we'd had more time this summer. Things were just getting interesting! I know you were a bit disappointed I wasn't expelled couldn't stay with you -- I was too, more now that I'm here and we have Umbridge -- but I have to finish school. You know that, right?_

_I'm not going to settle for just kisses at Christmas, so whatever we make up better take that into account._

_Miss you lots._

_Harry_

He closes the mulberry book with the _Harry_ embossed in gold leaf on the front, and stares at the wall. The little boy he might have been (the boy whose voice he has never been able to kill, not for all his years of surviving the Dursleys) wants to believe some magical explanation will appear to make everything right, while the dark cynical part of him suspects Sirius filled these books with sick fantasies about his godson, elaborating to the point of mimicking his handwriting.

Most of him is locked in a tingling state of confusion. His lips are numb and cold.

It's a thousand ways of wrong, but for this: even with Azkaban etched into the lines of his face and the slope of his shoulders, Sirius had _presence_. He thinks about that presence and how it might have felt to have it against him (on him, pressing him into the bed that now sits empty behind him), and the room feels warmer.

I wrote this, he tells that darkest part of himself to see if it feels true. That's me smiling and trusting and wanting while Sirius takes pictures of me.

Then he deserved Azkaban, death, worse, replies the dark place, that part of him that holds enough hate to cast a killing curse, and though he can't force it silent he stops listening to it at once.

He's jealous of the bit of him that wrote those letters (might have written, the little boy insists).

*****

He has come to this house to put away one ghost, and now he is bombarded by so many more. There are love notes spelled hidden in vases, a pair of his Y-fronts under Sirius's mattress.

He pores over his old school things, and finds another photograph sealed between the cover and the front plate of a textbook. That magic tingle runs through him and it's just there: Sirius, wearing a cocky grin and socks and nothing else, and he's not just touching himself, he's jerking off, one arm behind his head. He's left-handed.

He charms the photo to the footboard of the (their) bed. The photo-Sirius smiles and they're like mirrors when they come at night.

On a Tuesday (he doesn't know which, but the milk-owl arrives Tuesdays) he spies a key in plain view on the mantle. He tingles as he passes it, the same tingle that has led him to diaries and notes and other things meant only for their eyes Sirius has squirreled around the house. He takes the key to Gringotts, and Alpinhorn leads him to a small vault (vault 955) with only one object inside.

He takes the small box of little glass bottles home (the house has become one, despite its best efforts) and sets it on the desk next to Dumbledore's old pensieve. Tries not to think of the last time he used it, the deaths that followed. He stares at it for a long time before he realizes his face is wet.

It probably rained (he thinks, before he remembers he took the floo).

*****

It must have been summer _(or so the first memory he watches goes)_, for Harry was wearing shorts. _(1995, he reckons by the sulky scowl on his own face and the fact that Sirius is standing by the window, alive and well and pretending to inspect the curtains but really watching the street with eyes jealous under a petulant frown.)_

"Here you are," Harry said, and threw himself into a ratty chair. "You were supposed to meet me upstairs."

"Moody's here." Sirius seemed more interested in the window than Harry. _(He sees the sudden shift in posture and the way Sirius's shoulders twist subtly towards the boy, and knows the truth.)_ "That eye of his..."

Harry's scowl melted into a sly grin. "He can't _hear_ through walls. Did you like kissing me?"

Sirius let the curtain fall and titled his gaze down. "Yes."

"Do you want to do it again?" Harry's eyes narrowed. _(He's reminded of how awful he was to everyone that year, and can't imagine why anyone forgave him for it. Sirius's bowed head and the tendons leaping in his neck hurt to witness, but his younger self is merciless.)_ "Do you want to kiss me? Do you want to put your tongue in my mouth and suck on my lips? Do you--"

"I want to fuck you," Sirius said, and Harry shut up at once. He turned very red, but some of the belligerence bled out of him.

"Yeah?"

"Yes," Sirius said. "I want to strip you and lick every inch of your body."

Harry's hand crept onto his own lap, then higher. "Don't," Sirius said, and Harry returned his hand to the chair arm. He bit his lip. Neither looked very happy.

"He won't stay the night," Harry said, and Sirius looked even more unhappy. Then Sirius took a shuddering breath and a tentative smile curved his lips. _(Sirius hadn't shaved and he can almost feel the stubble rasping across his skin and he shudders too and wonders why.)_

"I'll come up after Ron's asleep, okay?" Harry's voice had gentled, and Sirius's smile turned wry but the corners of his eyes crinkled. _(And he doesn't hate this wrathful selfish younger him so much now.)_

"Door'll be open," Sirius said, and looked like a man who'd just invited the Devil to dinner.

*****

He leans back and scrubs his face. He has walked too often in this pensieve to suspect forgery of the scene he has just witnessed.

(He has been misled and manipulated too often to trust it.)

He makes tea, because that's what British people do when they're shaken. The Dursleys never gave _him_ tea to soothe him and it's one more thing he's had to train himself to do to be normal. He drinks while it's still too hot.

Then he looks at the pensieve again.

Because he's Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and he has the habits of eighteen years of bull-headed perseverance (the godfather-killing kind) to drive him.

*****

Sirius lay on his bed wearing jogging bottoms and a rucked-up tee shirt, one hand behind his head, the other running over his bared ribs. _(They still stand out from his flesh, but less than the year before. They will never have the chance to fully subside.)_. The touch was more contemplative than intimate, and his gaze lay focused somewhere beyond the ceiling.

A soft knock from the door earned no response; a louder one provoked a blink and a quiet, "Come in."

The door opened just enough for Harry to slip inside. _(The angry creature he remembers himself as has been replaced by something shy with wide over-bright eyes and a mouth that doesn't know whether to grin or bite its own lips.)_

"Hi."

"Hi yourself." The shirt fell as Sirius sat up, and a long silence swathed the room before Harry flung himself over to the bed. He fell just short of tackling Sirius, halted on his knees, too abruptly, too obviously, and pecked a stubble-free cheek with a jerky bird-like motion.

"Hi," he said again, and Sirius laughed and one arm came up to circle Harry's waist. A tug tipped Harry into his lap. "I'm not very good at this."

Sirius shrugged. "Neither am I. Out of practice."

An awkward moment descended, full of half-glances and aborted speech and minor collisions of elbows. Then Harry kissed Sirius and Sirius kissed him back.

Arms snaked around waists and hands tangled in clothing and hair and they toppled back, Harry astride Sirius's narrow hips. _(He can see the wing-like bones soaring above the waistband of the faded grey jogging bottoms and his stomach dives.)_

Sirius's fingers found Harry's ribs with less-than-noble intent, and Harry shrieked into a pillow until Sirius can cast a silencing spell and then the fight was on, and there was tickling and wrestling and rolling and sneaky kisses and Sirius turning into a dog to wriggle free whenever Harry started to win.

They ended as they began, with Harry on top, only panting and red-cheeked and sparkle-eyed, Harry pinning Sirius's wrists to the bed and Sirius letting him.

"Gotcha," Harry said.

"Do you."

"Yeah."

Sirius bucked, not quite trying to dislodge his captor, and Harry gasped. "So what are you going to do with me?"

Harry didn't answer, his expression rapturous as he ground back, meeting each thrust. _(All his weight is on his hands, the ones pinning Sirius to the bed, and his hair hangs in his face and sweat drips down on Sirius but Sirius seems to like it.)_

"Got something for me?" Sirius continued in that low voice, teasing and gentle and ravenous all at once. He pulled one hand free and cupped Harry's crotch. "This, maybe?"

"Yeah."

"Mine?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Undo your jeans."

Harry fumbled to obey, still rocking, and Sirius shoved down his jogging bottoms as far as he could with Harry atop him. His erection leapt out, eager horse at the gate. _(Sirius's prick is gorgeous: thick and purple, proud upward curve, slight list to the right, foreskin stretched tight, beautiful tracery of veins, pearly sheen on the head catching the candlelight.)_

Harry finally got his jeans undone and his Y-fronts yanked out of the way, and they made discordant sounds as their cocks came together, Harry high and desperate, Sirius low and needy. A jerky uncoordinated rhythm was all they could manage, as Sirius pulled at Harry's hips, fingers digging into the pale flesh of his arse, and it didn't last more than a minute before Harry stiffened and his face twisted into something horribly unattractive and he spilled a glistening mess between them.

Sirius groaned and arched even higher, eyes half-lidded and never wavering from Harry's face. Harry hummed a sigh and flexed with lazy contentment, undulating against Sirius's faster rhythm until Sirius clutched him close and gasped. _(Sirius bites his lip when he comes. It's terribly sexy.)_

There was quiet. _(The heavy breathing as they cool seems natural. The ticking clock does not.)_

Harry slipped to the side and Sirius pulled off his shirt and used it to clean them, spreading the come all over both their stomachs before finally using his wand to spell the mess away. He fell back on the bed, and Harry curled up around him. _(Cat cuddling up to a much larger dog, needy and just a bit unsure of his welcome.)_

"Can I stay?"

The lazy comfort froze, and everything was awkward again. "Probably not a good idea, kiddo."

Harry wrinkled his nose. "Don't call me that when we're naked."

"We still have our clothes on. Mostly," Sirius said. His hand hovered a moment before stroking Harry's messier-than-ever black hair, and his expression melted. "Until the moon sets. I'll wake you."

_(The memory spills on and on as Sirius watches him sleep.)_

*****

He falls out of the pensieve and straight onto the bed, hand already down the front of his pants. He's not going to come from this, he's not, except he is, hot spurts filling his jeans (when it cools they'll be horrible but for now the stiff material rubs just the right way, like a rough tongue).

He lays there gasping, almost in tears and he doesn't know why. (He does. He just thinks he oughtn't cry over it.)

After a while he cleans up. Makes tea and doesn't drink it. Watches the remaining memories swirl in their bottles from the corner of his eye. Reads the same page of a novel over and over. Goes back to the pensieve.

*****

"Harry?"

"Go away." _(It's dark, but the in dim light flowing in from the hall he knows this is the room where he and Ron once stayed. It's four doors down the hall from the one that's his now and Sirius's always.)_

"Ron said you'd gone back to sleep. Your supper's getting cold."

"I'm not very hungry."

Sirius came in and sat on the bed. He was wearing a Santa Claus hat. Harry turned his face to the pillow. A swish and flick and the gas lights came on and the door closed with a soft snick. "Want to talk?"

"Not really."

"We're singing carols in the parlour after supper," Sirius said. _(Sirius almost touches his back, aborts the movement. He hates to see all the joy Sirius felt at having guests for Christmas buried under this worry, and perhaps his younger dumber self does too, for he raises his head.)_

"I don't mean to be selfish." _(He is. Selfish and ungrateful and stupid for wasting this time.)_

Sirius tipped Harry's face towards him, fingers gentle under his chin, thumb brushing his lower lip. "You're not. I wish you were happier. For your sake."

Harry smiled, but it was forced. _(He can see it in the tightness around his own eyes, know it from the related species of mistakes he made that year. He won't speak again of his fears to Sirius.)_ "I am happy to be here. I thought we'd spend Christmas with nothing but the books."

"Dirty letters, I hope." Sirius grinned, roguish under the jaunty Santa hat.

Harry bit his lip. _("Don't do that," he says crossly. "It makes you look twelve." The memory him doesn't listen.)_ "Have you thought about it? My present?"

_(Sirius ducks his head but he's not tense like he was in the summer memory. One of them has talked him around.)_"I only said I'd consider it to stop my fifteen-year-old godson from trying to seduce me in a house full of aurors."

"That worked well," Harry said, and Sirius smacked his bottom. "There aren't any aurors in the house now."

"I know."

"Do you want me?" _(He sounds uncertain now, but it's half an act. They've been having sex on paper for months, and he must know Sirius does.)_

Sirius didn't answer in words. _(Perhaps there have been too many.)_ He cupped Harry's face and drew him close enough to kiss. "You're a sexy man, Harry. Don't ever doubt that."

Harry shivered and closed his eyes as Sirius kissed him. _(Overwhelmed, he must be, by Sirius calling him sexy. Sirius calling him a man.)_ He wound his arms around Sirius's neck and kissed back.

"You want this?" Sirius asked. "For certain?"

"Yes!"

Sirius pulled away, and heaved a great phony sigh. "I spoil you rotten..."

Harry laughed and flung himself into another kiss, misery forgotten. "Well? They won't come upstairs, will they? Can we now?"

Sirius laughed and nodded, and Harry tugged his shirt off and shimmied out of his trousers while Sirius was still working on the buttons of his robe. They evened out at their underclothes as Harry dithered over taking his off. Sirius never paused, but shucked his to the floor. He flicked his wand at the door and it locked itself, then at the glass of water on the nightstand and it shimmered into something thick and fragrant and translucent blue.

"We're really going to do this."

"As long as you want to," Sirius said, and dipped his fingers in the glass. "Help me out here, kiddo."

A smile dawned on Harry's face. "Don't call--"

"Hush you."

"We're naked."

Sirius stilled. "Yeah."

"Yeah." _(The smile turns decidedly goofy, and they stare at each other as though sharing a private joke. Maybe they are.)_

Harry took the glass of lubricant and let Sirius guide his slick hands lower. Sirius eased a finger inside him, and then let Harry do it himself, and then twined their fingers together inside him, stroking, twisting, opening.

"Hold your legs up. That's it." A last lingering touch to Harry's thigh, and Sirius slipped between his legs, covering him with his body, kissing him.

_(He can't see the act for their bodies, but he can tell when Sirius enters him by the way his mouth falls open and a faint distress line creases his brow. It's a slow, slow entry and Sirius gentles him through it, murmuring praise and nonsense and talking him past the pain.)_

_(He's never hated himself more than he does for not remembering this.)_

"I'm okay. It doesn't hurt so much anymore." Harry flexed, winced, let his legs slide lower.

"Why the rush?" Sirius kissed his throat. "Enjoy this. You only lose your virginity once." _(He hears: Let me enjoy this. You can only give it to me once.)_ Slowly, he began to move, muscles a rising tide under skin, shoulder blades breaking like waves.

"Oh," Harry whispered, and Sirius, grinning, repeated a movement.

"It only gets better."

Harry clutched the hips rolling into his, and Sirius pressed their foreheads together.

_(He almost can't bear to watch, feels like an intruder in his own life. But he does watch, and Harry comes cradling Sirius's head to his chest and Sirius comes with the taste of Harry's release on his lips.)_

*****

It's dark in the bedroom when he pushes away from the pensieve. He doesn't light any candles, and falls into bed fully clothed and sleeps for a year. When he wakes, it's summer again.

Or maybe it's just the next day.

There's nothing else to do in a world where he slept with his godfather and then let him die, so he submerges himself in someone else's memory.

*****

Sirius lay on the bed once more, wearing boxers and the same tee shirt from the summer, but he held the mirror in one hand. He glanced at the clock.

"Harry," he whispered. _(It hurts to watch, but he does, and he shatters when he hears his own voice, tinny and small, from the glass.)_

"I'm here, Sirius."

"All right?"

"Yeah. False alarm." Sirius tilted his head, lifting a brow. "Muggle expression. They're all asleep."

"Good." A quick grin. "Take off your tie. That's it, give me a show."

"This is so much better than the books. I love watching you watch me, hearing your voice..."

"Exhibitionist."

"For you." A rustle from the mirror, and Sirius's lips parted, and he drew a slow audible breath.

"Just like that, Harry. You've been reading our old letters again, haven't you?"

_(He steals a look over Sirius's shoulder, and sees himself in the mirror, tie binding his hands in front -- clumsily as he's tied the knot himself. His shirt and trousers are undone, and he's stroking his cock with both hands. Ginger strokes, as anything more would undo the knot. Undo the fantasy.)_

Sirius had slipped one hand into his boxers. "What would you do if I were there right now?"

"I'd kneel in front of you," Harry answered. No hesitation. "I'd take the band of your pants in my teeth and tug them down. They'd catch on your cock 'cause you're so hard."

"Yes." Sirius tipped his head back. His eyes had gone feverish. "You'd be careful though."

"Yeah."

"And take your time."

"I want to get it right."

"Your breath's seeping through. So warm."

"I get them down, and your cock is there, right in my face."

Sirius yanked his boxers down and tilted the mirror. _(He thinks about what this looks like from the other mirror, Sirius's cock so big and eager, his face beyond, watching and wanting. He moans and cups the front of his trousers.)_

"Like this?" Sirius asked, and stroked his erection, his knuckles brushing the glass.

"Yeah."

"What would you do with my cock that close to your mouth?"

"The obvious."

"Yes?"

"I'd lick you first, just for a taste. Then I'd be braver, and greedier, and wrap my lips around the head. Maybe I'd tongue the slit."

Sirius's hand tightened, and he pinched the tip of his cock. "I'd have to touch you then. Cup your face, slide my fingers through your hair... You're so beautiful. Your mouth is made for cocksucking." A gasp echoed from the mirror. "Not yet, not yet. I want us to come together."

"Hurry up then!" Harry moaned, and Sirius laughed. _(Low and breathless and sexy laughter. Sirius's hair is in his eyes like he's starred in a thousand porn films. He can't imagine what Sirius sees when he looks at the mirror like that. It can't be the scrawny boy he knows is really there.)_

"You want it fast then?" Sirius asked. "Fast and hard?"

"Yes!"

"I can't take your teasing mouth on me any longer or I'm going to come all over your face." _(There's a strangled gasp from the mirror. He parrots it, fighting to get his trousers open and his cock out, and he doesn't know what will happen if he comes in a pensieve but the last time he came in his jeans it was a sticky uncomfortable mess.)_

"I shove you back to the bed," Sirius continued, almost growling the words now, his voice had gone so low and rough. His hand was a blur, setting the pace of the words. "I pull your hands over your head and tie them to the bed, climb on top of you. You're ready, so ready... push inside you... so... tight..."

The tendons in Sirius's neck stood taut. Jaw clenched, breath whistling through teeth, he arched off the bed. Long white liquid strings shot over his hollowed stomach, crisscrossing each other, painting his skin iridescent.

_(Whatever happened, he loves this man who is in ecstasy for him.)_

At once Sirius drew the mirror closer to his face, his own pleasure forgotten as he drank in what he saw. _(He doesn't know what Sirius sees. Doesn't look. Sirius is who he wants to watch.)_ "Did you feel me come inside you? Did you feel it, Harry, feel me fucking you, my cock slamming hard--"

"Oh, god!"

Sirius held his breath, unblinking, before he shivered and the tension in his body eased. "That was the hottest thing I've ever seen."

"Mmm." The hum turned into a yawn. "Better than last night?" Harry mumbled from miles away.

"Every night's better."

They were quiet a moment, and Sirius's eyes never left the glass.

"Sirius?"

"Yes?"

"You're the only thing making this year bearable."

Sirius closed his eyes. "Get some sleep, kiddo."

"Don't call me kiddo when we're--"

"You're not naked. Go to sleep." He rubbed the mirror's frame, caressing the silver filigree. Then he pressed a kiss to his fingers and touched them to the glass. "Goodnight, Harry."

*****

He spills out of the pensieve shaking and spent. His trousers are open and come is dripping down the side of his hand, seeping into the thighs of his jeans.

There's one bottled memory left. He means to save it, but he wakes in the night standing over Dumbledore's pensieve with the bottle in his hand, a wispy silver asp coiled at the bottom.

*****

Sirius hummed to himself as he clipped articles from the newspaper and spelled them to a larger sheet of parchment. Tongue poking out, he touched his wand's tip to the articles dozens of times.

_(If he leans over Sirius's shoulder he can see the names have been changed to people Sirius knows, leaving amusing stories about Tonks opening a pottery store called Unbreakables and Snape being arrested for mooning the Minister's wife at the May Day celebrations.)_

Sirius chuckled to himself as he read over his work, and then turned back to the Swiss cheese of a newspaper.

The door opened with no ceremony, and Lupin came in, pale-faced. _(There's a small black book clutched in his hand and if May Day is in the Prophet, the full moon is more than six days past and no excuse for the way Lupin trembles.)_

"Padfoot," Lupin said, sounding hoarse. The scissors paused, and then resumed their slicing. "Is this yours."

Not a question. _(Sirius's name is on the spine. He wants to ask Lupin how stupid he is, but Lupin isn't the stupid one that put a name on such a book.)_

"Never seen it before," Sirius said, careless in tone and action. "Fuck." He stuck his bleeding finger in his mouth and the scissors clattered to the desk. _(He's not even trying to lie well.)_

"How long?"

"None of your business."

"Since the summer?"

"You've obviously read it, so why ask me?"

"Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"Fucked my godson," Sirius said blithely. "Now get out of my room. I'm a busy man."

"Jesus." Lupin sat in the armchair by the door. A heap of dirty clothes slid off the back of it. "Did you even consider what this would do to Harry? What were you thinking?"

Sirius seemed to accord the question a lot of thought. "I was thinking about how good it felt to sink my prick into his arse and listen to him beg me to fuck him harder."

Lupin choked something incoherent, and Sirius looked up at last. _(He's frightened by the hopelessness in the dead eyes and stony face and thinks for a moment that Lupin is a dementor, sucking all the warmth and love and Sirius away.)_

"Just do whatever you're going to do, Remus." _(Because you're going to anyway, is what Sirius doesn't say.)_

Lupin leapt out of the chair as though it were on fire. "What I'm going to... You..." He stopped and the muscles in his jaw jumped. "I'm going to go take care of Harry. You... stay put. I'll be back." He paused at the door. "I won't tell Dumbledore, but... Fuck, Padfoot."

Sirius said nothing, and after a moment Lupin left.

"Like bloody fucking hell," Sirius muttered to the empty room. He picked up the scissors, put them down again. He got up and rummaged in the wardrobe, then the trunk in the corner, then under the bed. He emerged dusty, with a box of old potions bottles.

He touched his wand to his head, and began pulling long strings of memory.

Summer.

Christmas.

Easter.

Them.

He stopped, wand raised to his temple. "Harry."

_(He jumps.)_

"If you're seeing this then Remus _fixed_ you. You've forgotten about us, this past year. In August I would have given anything to make you forget, make you give up, but now that you may have... I don't know if I can bear seeing you look at me like we never made love.

"Maybe you hate me now. God knows I hate myself some days."

Sirius was silent for a long time.

"I'm frightened. I've never felt this way about anyone, not even James."

He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. Sighed.

*****

The memory ends and he's choking on grief and hate and wounded trust.

_Snape_, he wants to call Lupin (it's the worst insult he knows). _You're no better._

*****

On a Tuesday (maybe it's the same one or maybe it's a week or two later), he goes to see Lupin.

He doesn't think he's ever seen Lupin so flabbergasted.

"You were sleeping with Sirius," Lupin says carefully. "That whole year. And you say I caught you?"

Ingenuous denial is not a tactic he anticipated, but it works, cuts the anger out from under him, makes him feel crazy.

"Harry," Lupin says, pushing more hot chocolate at him. Normal people offer tea for shock. (He should know. He tries so hard to be normal.) "Think about what you're saying. The only reliable way to alter memory is an obliviation charm. Have you had any trouble with your memory in the last few years? You've seemed the same to me, if more withdrawn."

He shakes his head, feels even less angry, even more crazy.

"And why on earth would you have risked calling Sirius through the fire if you had been writing to him since the summer?" Lupin flips through the books again, shaking his head. "Harry... I don't know if someone is playing a cruel prank on you, or if you just miss Sirius so much you're--"

"Going mad?"

"I was going to say upset enough that your magic is creating these 'signs' to make you feel better." Lupin sighs, pausing in his perusal of the maroon book, reading a few words. "Sirius was circumcised, Harry, as are most boys from very old wizard families." He closes the book and slides it across the table. "I should know. I shared a dorm with him for seven years, and he didn't know the meaning of the word modesty."

He sips his chocolate. It's not so hot anymore, and has trouble getting down his throat.

Lupin's not lying. He's just wrong. (He has to be.)

*****

It's Friday, the sixteenth of July, 1999. He knows this because the sign at the bank says so. It's two weeks before his birthday (he knows this because he must; no one else would remember it but him. That's not true anymore, but he can't break that habit).

Alpinhorn is a busy goblin, but he takes a moment to speak to one who (is respected and feared and heroic and heartsick) holds the key to two of Gringotts' fullest vaults.

"When," he asks, "was vault 955 opened?"

And the answer is two days before he returned to empty it.

He finds the paperwork for the vault, signed in his own hand, lining Hedwig's cage. Hedwig's been gone eight months. Her water dish is full, and he doesn't remember filling it. He changes the lining anyway, and opens a bag of owl treats.

*****

The little glass bottles are cracked and dusty. They've never held a memory, and it's been years since they've held a potion. When he looks under the bed, he sees fresh handprints in the dust. He puts the box of bottles back, careful to place his hands in the existing tracks. They fit perfectly.

Lupin comes to see him on a day that isn't a Tuesday. He makes tea and small talk in disproportionate amounts, and doesn't pretend to be normal, not for Lupin.

"Look," he says, and pushes the sugar bowl across the table.

Lupin lifts the lid and pulls out a leather bracelet. A paw print has been etched into the inner surface (he doesn't remember Sirius giving it to him, but he knows the mark is on the inside to wear against his skin, next to his pulse). He also knows the sugar bowl was full that morning.

"You have to stop doing this to yourself, Harry."

There's no sugar in the bowl, not even a grain, but the leather is curiously sandy in texture. He barely feels the tingle of the wandless transfiguration anymore. He's nineteen and as alone as he's always been. As he didn't have to be.

"Why didn't you save him?" he asks, and Remus answers with another question, the only question.

(Why didn't _you_?)

Kindly asked, but it's the crux of all ghosts in this house to which he has returned to heal, and there will never be an answer.


End file.
